Their next step was really rather Napoleonic and made Sir Edmund’s rise to wealth clear to me. They determined to bring down a new doctor who should be both agreeable to them and capable as a healer and establish him in our very village, not only as a constant attendant upon themselves, but as a menace and source of annoyance, and even loss, to me. But here they were baulked by the goodness of my friends. One cannot be a doctor in the same rural neighbourhood all one’s life, and succeed a father who also had been there for years and years, without setting up certain relationships that are thicker than water. I had made no effort to do so, but simply through being one’s more or less amiable self, and liking my work rather than not, I had done so. If I had consciously toiled to be popular, I might have failed; but I had just gone on my way, neglected no one, at any rate not scandalously, spoken my mind when it was asked for, and hurried, I hope and believe, very few of my neighbours under the turf. To have built up this structure of friendliness was my part in the frustration of Sir Edmund’s masterful campaign. His own contribution to his failure was his neglect to have become the owner of any property in the district except the Hall and its satellite cottages. The result was that when his nominee tried to rent a house in which to set up his rival practice, he could not get one. Anybody else could have had one—an avowed burglar even, with all his tools about him—but not a doctor! The situation was not made any easier for the Fergussons by the palpitations of their cook—a very excellent cook—who, on being forbidden to visit me about her malady, at once gave notice. If she might not have the doctor she wished, she explained, she should certainly leave. Nor would she stay out the month either, she added, but would cheerfully forfeit her wages in order that she might the sooner submit her agitated heart to my examination. Good cooks having never grown on blackberry bushes, and this one being especially clever with chicken’s livers (one of Sir Edmund’s many culinary weaknesses), her departure was a very serious blow to him, in a very sensitive part. To say that Sir Edmund and Lady Fergusson’s aches and twinges multiplied under their disappointments is to state the case with parsimony. They increased to such an extent that the two old coddlers saw graves yawning for them on every hand, and longed with a consuming longing—which was not the less because each had to hide it from the other for pride’s sake—for the solicitude and knowledge of the only man who knew them through and through—a longing so constantly consuming that there was nothing for it but to go to London or to fly the flag of truce. They hated London, but to capitulate was too undignified; and so for a while the Hall was empty. * * * * *